


on the way home

by jellijeans



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Background Relationships, Brief One-Sided Melia/Shulk, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst, Melia Centric, Mid-Canon, Post-Canon, Pre Future Connected, Relationship Study, Spoilers, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellijeans/pseuds/jellijeans
Summary: Melia cannot help but feel, when she sees Fiora run to Dunban, that there is a long story behind these two.She cannot help but feel like there is so much she did not know before that she suddenly knows when Dunban’s lip quivers, when he wraps his arm around his sister and leans his head overtop hers, when Reyn and Shulk share a nod and a gaze and a laugh, that there is a part of their common Homs lives that she will never understand, a deep sense of longing and belonging and loss and life that she will never be a part of.(Melia, and a series of moments.)
Relationships: Dunban & Fiora (Xenoblade Chronicles), Fiora & Reyn & Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles), Fiora/Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles), Melia Ancient | Melia Antiqua & Everybody, Melia Ancient | Melia Antiqua & Shulk
Comments: 24
Kudos: 42





	on the way home

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR XENOBLADE CHRONICLES!!
> 
> i finished xenoblade chronicles back in july and it swiftly became more or less my favorite game.... shulk/fiora absolutely stole my heart but i LOVE every single character in the game, and i thought melia is definitely a very interesting character especially given what she's going through between the end of the game and future connected :"^) i wanted to write something that leads up to her decision to try to return to alcamoth!! hopefully i did her justice!!

Melia cannot help but feel, when she sees Fiora run to Dunban, that there is a long story behind these two.

She cannot help but feel like there is so much she did not know before that she suddenly knows when Dunban’s lip quivers, when he wraps his arm around his sister and leans his head overtop hers, when Reyn and Shulk share a nod and a gaze and a laugh, that there is a part of their common Homs lives that she will never understand, a deep sense of longing and belonging and loss and life that she will never be a part of.

Perhaps she should be thankful for that. Thankful that she has Kallian and the entire High Entia empire standing behind her, people willing to rally at her feet for any cause. Thankful that she and her people had been able to sit peacefully in Alcamoth, aware but apathetic of the attacks below.

She regrets not challenging that decision more than she can say now that she is familiar with the Homs, familiar with their lives. Familiar with Shulk.

Yes, she is very familiar with Shulk. She is not familiar with the way his gaze lingers on Fiora, the way the fears she sees rest heavy on his face lift when Fiora turns and smiles at him. She is not familiar with this side of Shulk, who takes Fiora’s hand and holds it with a tenderness she has never known.

She had thought—Sharla, too, had thought—that maybe she _was_ familiar with this side of Shulk. Certainly, he had been gentle with her, made sure she had awoken and sworn to protect her, to rebuild Alcamoth by her side if she needed him, but now she is aware that that is just how Shulk _is_. She means much to him, she knows that is the truth, but she will never mean what Fiora means to Shulk.

She can see that Sharla sees it, too, when she and Linada treat Fiora and watch Shulk spend every waking moment he isn’t doing favors for the villagers at her side. Sharla has not told her to _stop_ trying, per se, but she hasn’t encouraged her in the same way that she did before, either. Sharla sees it. They all do. Melia has even seen Dunban’s face, always dark with worry, lighten at the sight of the two of them. He never did that with her.

There is a past behind these two, and she will never be a part of it.

Perhaps that is the burden of being a High Entia. Severed from her people, the High Entia, never a part of her other people, the Homs. Always distant. Always alone.

The High Entia do not even know her face. She is nothing more than a stranger to them. A concept of a princess, a figurehead they can rally behind and only think they know.

There is a simplicity to Homs’ lives. There are no empires, no capitals, no princesses wearing masks; there is hardly even a class distinction between them. The people in the colonies do not live easy lives, and so everyone must work, whether that is farming or weapon development or being a soldier. Out of the Homs she knows—few, admittedly; the five Homs she knows are all a part of their merry band of a party—all of them did something like that. Shulk developed weapons. Reyn and Dunban were soldiers, and Sharla a medic. Fiora took care of the people of Colony 9. They certainly do not live in luxury in the way that the High Entia do, and they constantly fear Mechon attacks, but it is a life nonetheless. The Homs know how to survive, and when they do not, when their colonies are destroyed and everything they have done is laid to waste, they take a moment to grieve and then rebuild. They do not lose sight of the future, but perhaps that is because they do not look for it in the way that the High Entia have always done. They live life one moment at a time.

Perhaps there is something she can learn from that.

But despite the past, there is a future, a present that she gets to be a part of. She is there when Dunban finally swallows his pride and asks for someone to tie up his hair during one of their roastingly hot nights in Makna; she is the one to tie it up for him, in a messy bun and an ornate braid that he runs his fingers against when he thinks no one is looking. She is there when Sharla sees Reyn have too close of a call with a Mechon and breaks down as soon as he’s treated. She is there for Fiora when her body starts giving way and she is there for Shulk, for everyone, whenever she is needed.

And they are there for her. They are there when Lorithia transforms Kallian into a Telethia and they are there for her after his death, and they welcome her into their found family like she is one of their own. They are there for her when Alcamoth falls. They restore what of the capital they can with her, relocate what little of the High Entia there are left. They sit with her in the Imperial Villa after they fell the beast that was once Galdo, her trusted imperial guard, and they hold her when she breaks.

(After all this, she decides to give up and tells Sharla that she believes Shulk and Fiora deserve a future together. In a way, it is sad, but in another, it is freeing.)

When Bionis falls, she returns with them to the colony and is once again witness to the Homs’ determination to survive. People begin to rebuild without hesitation, quarter the new colony—still called Colony 9, despite everything, still their home—into districts reminiscent of the old, and lives continue. Dunban, Otharon, and Vanea take responsibility, heading up what is left of their societies.

She thinks that somehow, leadership looks more apt on Dunban than fighting ever did. Perhaps this is what he should have been doing all along.

There were little things that were able to be saved when Shulk reconstructed the world, a template to rebuild the colony off of, and no war to prevent them from doing so. She feels bad for the people of Colony 6, who had just finished rebuilding their home and had suddenly lost it again, but rebuilding the new colony seems like it takes no time at all. In that Homs way, everyone helps, and days are short and progress moves quickly. They are allowed—no, _encouraged_ to rest, but almost everyone is off their feet for only a day or two at most. It is simply not in their natures to stand on the sidelines and let everyone else do the work. Dunban heads the restoration, Reyn jumps right into construction, Sharla treats the injured, Riki reunites with his family.

Fiora rests. Her body is failing, and her time is limited. Her energy source runs dry. Dunban practically forces her not to help, and when she finally agrees it is a sick mirror of the beginning of their journey, when she had brought him food and water instead.

Shulk doesn’t sleep. Melia stays up with him, sometimes, pondering the future of her people in silence as he buries his head in a book and reads and takes notes all night long. He gets up to help with reconstruction in the morning, and Melia wonders when he ever sleeps.

(She finds out when: for some hours in the afternoon and early evening, when he visits Fiora in Dunban’s house. Fiora tells her he inevitably falls asleep hunched over the foot of her bed, or something like that. Dunban laid out a mat on the floor for him, which has apparently helped a little bit, but Shulk’s frequently aching back does make more sense to her now.)

He finally makes a breakthrough one night, tears slipping off his cheeks and onto his notes when he realizes there is a way she can be saved, that Fiora does not have to die after only a moment in their new world. Six months in a regeneration chamber and then sixty or more years after that of living and breathing in a body composed of only flesh and blood and nothing more.

Such a short, delicate thing, the life of a Homs. Melia is eighty-eight and feels as if it has gone by in the blink of an eye. Meanwhile, Shulk fights for Fiora and the life they’ve lived together, something Melia sees as barely a life at all.

When they’ve found the regeneration chamber and confirmed everything is still in working order, Shulk, Reyn, and Dunban are the ones to see her off, along with Linada. Sharla and Riki had agreed that it was only right if it was the four of them—they deserved a moment of privacy. The three of them had never known Fiora before she was given her Mechon body, after all. It wasn’t their moment to share. They could celebrate afterwards. Regardless, they wait outside the chamber as the boys and Linada walk her in, backs turned out of privacy and respect.

(And what she doesn’t see in the chamber is Dunban crying when he wraps his one working arm around her, presses a kiss to her forehead, years of harsh lines and emaciation softened by peace and the hope of everything that has been stolen from them being returned. She doesn’t see the way Reyn lifts her off the ground when he hugs her, tells her he’ll hug her just like that when she’s back, sniffles and tries—and fails—not to cry when he puts her down. She doesn’t see the way Fiora affectionately chuckles at him and pats the side of his face, exchanging soft smiles in the way that only childhood friends do.

She doesn’t see this, but Reyn and Dunban do: the way Shulk is already crying, wiping at his eyes when she gets to him, the way his tears are reflected in her own. The way he takes her hands, metallic and cold, and squeezes them as if he can feel the life flooding back into them already. The way his eyes meet hers and his lip quivers. The way he doesn’t even care that people are watching, how he throws his arms around her and kisses her like she’ll fall apart if he doesn’t, how after they break apart he just holds her for a second, head dipped into the metallic crevice of her neck. Reyn and Dunban exchange a glance and a smile, still trying to pull themselves together.

She doesn’t see the beginning of their happy ending, but she knows it’s happening.)

She does see when they walk out, Dunban and Reyn having mostly pulled themselves together, Shulk barely at all. Sharla is already on her way over, ready to see if he’s okay, but when he pulls his arm away from his face, he’s smiling.

“Six months,” he says, “and she’ll be back.”

And then Riki breaks out into a cheer, and Sharla laughs and grins in response, and Reyn claps Shulk’s back and hugs him and pulls Dunban into it, who is at first resistant but melts into it in the way that older brothers do—and she sees it. The meaningfulness of a life as short as the Homs’. Their dedication, their will to survive. She understands.

Perhaps she should strive for that too, she thinks, and her mind drifts back to Alcamoth. They never saw it fall, never found its remains—it must still be up there, somewhere. It must. There must be a way back.

Shulk looks up, breaking away from Reyn’s embrace, and meets her eyes. There is an understanding there: a knowledge that she, too, has unfinished business. A fierceness there that she has grown so familiar with. A promise that he will be there when she needs him, and that he will help her find her way home the same way she did for him. A way back.

She holds his gaze, and she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! come yell with me on twitter at @jellijeans!!


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